The Curse of the Macro Puzzle...

Let's face it, boys and girls... puzzles can sometimes be frustrating. In our recent Ravenloft campaign, we have been marooned on a strange island upon which we appear to be trapped. Our group made several attempts at paddling our lifeboat out into the sea, only to get repeatedly deposited back on the same shores from whence we came.

At this point, I don't know if it is a puzzle or one of those magical effects intended to keep us within the constraints of the general plot, but suffice it to say several repeat failures was a wee bit frustrating for our group.

The cost of moving on

I have attempted to use these larger scale puzzles or traps within my own campaigns, and I constantly run into trouble with people not "getting the hints" or constantly trying the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result. This is actually Einstein's definition of insanity, for those keeping score at home.

One of two things happen: the session grinds to a halt, with frustrated players quickly breaking character and discussing the plot reasons why they aren't able to solve the approach with their best efforts, or they attempt to abandon the puzzle and move on to find out more about their surroundings hoping later to find the key that will lead them to success.

I have two pieces of advice for those wanting to inject this type of event into their campaigns: expect your players to be stupider than you give them credit for. The glaring hint that you have given them will almost never make sense unless you beat the players over the head with it, or give them several data points upon which to connect the dots. Secondly, you should always give your players an "out", where they can move on to explore another part of the plot while they figure out the aspects of the puzzle that are currently unclear.

Luckily, our DMs for this campaign did the latter and allowed us a few leads to different areas of the plot, which we wrapped up the last session by following. Hopefully more will become clear next week, but the progress was encouraging and that is the benefit from this approach.

Behind the Screen: Problems with planes and psionics...

I was reflecting on some old college D&D games, and I remembered a certain guy in our group that always wanted to play a psionic. Eventually, we did have a game where our DM allowed psionics and I remember it being a confusing and generally frustrating process largely because this person would, at length, dictate to us his specific rules for using his skills and it was rather painful.

I have found the same issue with planar travel and trying to weave a storyline that involves traversing ephemeral distances in this fashion. Much time is spent explaining the state of the situation you want your players to get into, the usual dangers of travelling across the fabric of space and time, and the preparations that come along with that.

I've had some limited success in enticing the players with plot or treasure to make the plunge into different planes, but by and large this type of game seems to walk on a knife's edge of fun. It's either really enjoyable, or really painful.

How do you handle introducing these elements into your campaigns? Inquiring minds want to know!